


66. chosen dreams

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [133]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Imaginary Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 04:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8518426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Bite him, says the girl with Sarah's face.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: abuse, drug use, brief reference to fetus cannibalism]

Helena shows up for the first time when Sarah is six years old. A girl her age with frizzy hair and solemn wide eyes, wearing a torn-up dress and with dirt under all her fingernails crouching next to Sarah like a gargoyle as Sarah’s latest foster father yells at her from where he’s standing over her.

_Bite him_ , says the girl whose name Sarah doesn’t yet know.

“He’s so big,” Sarah says, “I don’t know how.”

“What did you just say to me?” says her foster father.

_Wait until he leans in close_ , says the girl, _and bite his finger, and when he yells and leans back you crawl between his legs and run._

“How’d you know that,” Sarah says. “Who are you.”

Her foster father leans in close and the girl says _now_ and Sarah bites him. When he yells and leans back she crawls between his legs and she runs.

* * *

“Who _are_ you,” Sarah says through heaving breaths. She’s sitting on the roof; she crawled out her window and now she’s here where no one can find her. The girl with her face is sitting next to her. She didn’t climb up here. Sarah would’ve seen her.

_I’m yours_ , she says easily.

“I made you up?”

_You didn’t make me. I made me. You just needed me._

“What’s your name?”

_You can name me._

“I don’t know how.”

_Helena_ , says the girl, reaching out with light fingers to touch the bruise on Sarah’s face. _You can call me that. If you want._

* * *

Helena gets older as she gets older. When Sarah bleaches her hair for the first time – just a few streaks of it – Helena laughs and shakes her hair out bleach-blonde, falling in ragged curls. She doesn’t dress like Sarah dresses. Her voice doesn’t sound like Sarah’s. Sarah didn’t choose any of these things for her, but she’s stopped asking questions. Helena is the part of her that always knows when the guy behind the counter is looking the other way so you can steal a candy bar. Helena knows just where on men’s bodies to hit them so that they go breathless. Helena tells her when to bluff and when to fold and when to go all in and Sarah wins every single goddamn game.

She never comes when Sarah calls; she only comes when she thinks Sarah needs her. Sometimes Sarah thinks she needs her all the time. Sometimes she wishes Helena would just go away and leave her alone.

Helena doesn’t care. She climbs into Sarah’s bed and presses her cold fingers to Sarah’s aching skin until it goes numb; she hums Sarah lullabies until she falls asleep.

* * *

“Who are you,” Sarah says. She is nineteen years old and high and lying in a stranger’s bed and Helena is sitting on the windowsill, legs folded. She’s wearing her jeans tucked into a pair of combat boots that are impressively scuffed considering they didn’t exist the last time Sarah saw her.

_You keep asking that_ , Helena says. _What do you think the answer is?_

“Dunno,” Sarah says. “You’re magic, or some shit.”

Helena hums. Her legs unfold and she starts idly swinging her feet. _We were twins,_ she says, _and you ate me in the womb, and now I am inside of you_. She starts laughing, choked-up little giggles, and Sarah is high enough to find the image of her little fetus self eating another fetus hilarious. She laughs too, loud hysterical barks. Then she stops abruptly. It isn’t funny anymore.

“Bullshit,” she says.

_Yes_ , Helena says. _Bullshits._ She hums to herself a little bit more and says: _We were twins. That part is true. We were twins in another life, but we took too long to know each other. So I said, next time, I will always know her. Even if I have to give up everything just to know her. I will keep her safe._

“That one true?” Sarah says.

_Maybe_ , Helena says. _Or! Maybe you are crazy. That is the solution, I think._

Sarah stares at her, eyes lidded. “Seems sad,” she says. “Two of us missin’ the boat like that.”

_It would be sad_ , Helena says easily, _if it was true._

* * *

(Sarah reads Plath when she’s fourteen, before she decides high school is a waste of her time. _I close my eyes and all the world drops dead / I lift my lids and all is born again._

“I think I made you up,” she tells Helena, “inside my head.” Helena just laughs, like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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